Ethan Casey's Blog - Posts Tagged "college-life"

Like the best baseball novels, The Art of Fielding is not really about baseball. Or rather, it's about some of the things that baseball is also about. An added pleasure for me is that author Chad Harbach conveys a nice sense of Wisconsin, where he (and I) grew up, without laying it on too thick.

The Art of Fielding is one of those books that come with multiple front-matter pages full of intimidatingly gushing blurbs from famous writers and prestigious media outlets. Don't let that put you off. The hype is amply deserved; it really is an instant classic.

Harbach deploys all his metaphors - baseball, college life, the life and work of Herman Melville - assertively yet deftly and confidently, just right. About the main character, college shortstop phenom Henry Skrimshander, he reflects:

"All he'd ever wanted was for nothing to ever change. Or for things to change only in the right ways, improving little by little, day by day, forever. It sounded crazy when you said it like that, but that was what baseball had promised him, what Westish College had promised him, what Schwartzy had promised him. The dream of every day the same. Every day was like the day before but a little better. You ran the stadium a little faster. You bench-pressed a little more. You hit the ball a little harder in the cage; you watched the tape with Schwartzy afterward and gained a little insight into your swing. Your swing grew a little simpler. Everything grew simpler, little by little. You ate the same food, woke up at the same time, wore the same clothes. Hitches, bad habits, useless thoughts - whatever you didn't need slowly fell away. Whatever was simple and useful remained. You improved little by little till the day it all became perfect and stayed that way. Forever."